ABSTRACT
For many years, much discussion of resources as a global issue centred on the question of whether the world is ‘running out of resources’. This was a major concern at the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment of 1972 which marked the first wave of environmentalism in the modern age. Now, some two decades later, amidst a second and greater green wave, the focus has changed. The finite nature of resources is no less real, but debate surrounds the implications of their ‘sustainable use’. At the same time, global pollution levels appear a greater threat than resource depletion. Yet the two are related; pollution is an inevitable consequence of resource use, and also affects the productivity and availability of natural resources.
